


Hound Dog

by ladyflowdi



Category: No Fandom, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Established Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-23
Updated: 2008-03-23
Packaged: 2017-12-24 14:07:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyflowdi/pseuds/ladyflowdi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel has no recollection of the events that took place in the weeks prior to his death. Jack tries to help him remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hound Dog

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my LJ-to-AO3 project.

"The last to be overcome is death, and the knowledge of life is the knowledge of death." - Edgar Cayce

_I’ve earned the right to be dramatic._

_I know as proclamations go that one is pretty tame. Taking into consideration I’m fairly dramatic already, proclaiming the right to it seems a moot point – except for the fact that I’ve risen from the dead. Not the ‘climb out of a coffin, ‘I vant to suck your blood’’ Bram Stoker spiel, but the buck naked, freezing cold, ‘who the hell am I?’ Daniel Jackson kind. To tell the truth, it’s a bit disconcerting to know it was like naked college hazing, only in reverse (ahh, freshman year memories), but that’s a discussion for another time. Or possibly never. Never is good._

_And so, though I’ve attempted to approach this in a dozen different ways, I’m finding myself needing to express myself as it’s coming to me in my head, even if it comes off melodramatic. Here goes._

_I've come to realize that despite all my prior thoughts on the subject, death is nothing more than a life-leeching darkness. ...Dura Dun! Told you it was dramatic. Even so, death is leeching, and it is darkness, and it... it is life changing. It’s like a void. There aren’t any words in any language to properly explain the finality of dying, because no one’s experienced death like I have. I suspect, from time to time, that even if I could create an entire language of what it is to finally die, even that wouldn’t be sufficient._

_All right. Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system (and feel much better for it), I’ll go ahead and get on with it, because I’m babbling in an effort not to go into my emotions. How I... feel._

_...I’m feeling the need to lecture, actually, but I promised Dr. Bastard-who-drives-perfectly-sane-people-to-a-rubber-room that I wouldn’t make this my field journal. I’ve already broken that rule six times, granted, but I ran out of paper, and Jack was only giving me ten more minutes. I’ll just cut those pages out. No one will suspect. I can lecture in my real journal. Note to self: Hammurabi, Mesopotamia, Silk Road. Check._

_...and now I'll have to cut this page out. And re-write it. And rewrite everything that follows it. Note to self #2: Leave a blank page._

_Or not. Because nobody but me is going to be reading this, and obviously, I don't care if I break the rules. And it's not like I'm going to tell on myself. Note to self #3: please stop having conversations with yourself. You're not crazy yet, but if you keep this up you will be._

_Death. Yes. The subject we keep coming back to. I... died. I know that. Working through it, I am. The Force on my side, I have. ...Yoda, I am not. I am, however, delaying, yet again, because I don't want to think about being dead. I don’t need a shrink telling me I need to work through my feelings. To tell you the truth (and by ‘you’, of course, I mean ‘me’, because no one is ever going to read this. Why the hell am I writing in this, again?) I’ve got issues. I know I do. Major, huge, blistering issues, festering right at the forefront of my modest little brain, waiting to pop and send me running for another ‘scrip of Valium, God’s gift to man. And I’ve got issues because I died a terrible, agonizing death, a horror too huge to wrap my head around._

_I think this last time around the revolving door of the afterlife made me lose some vital part of myself. I mean, I’m still here, still alive, still relatively sane, but there’s a reason I’m seeing the base shrink here. I’m losing it._

_Well, not it it. Not my mind, that’s still all here in some feeble way. What I mean is... well, I’ve lost bits of myself. There comes a point in a man’s life, a life like the one I've lived, where he becomes too tired to explain any more than that, or delve any deeper in his psyche to find an answer. Not only have I reached that point, I’ve overshot it. I’m so exhausted with everything; myself, my work, my teammates, my very life. How can someone die as many times as I have and still function? I'm thirty seven years old, but might as well be a hundred and thirty seven. Jack claims I’ve got the ‘old man’ routine down to an art form._

_He’s one to talk._

_I’m just so tired._

_Going through the motions of buying clothes, a house and a car seems so absolutely exhausting in the context of my life, compared to the relative ease of living at the SGC, that I've found myself brushing off inquiring questions from my teammates time and time again. ‘Have you found an apartment yet?’ and ‘How goes the car search?’ and ‘Let me know when you want us to get your stuff out of storage’ often go unanswered, because I'm not sure I have an answer._

_All I need is a bed, a hot shower, and a desk I only have to look at to get tired – all things I can find at the SGC._

_In abundance._

_This journal is supposed to be about all of my huge, deep, mysterious feelings, right? Right. And since no one but me will ever read it, I guess it’s okay to say that... it’s been tough getting back into the swing of things. I mean, SG-1 found me, but before I really got to assimilate, Anubis tried to attack and before you can say "I’m getting too old for this" I was up to my neck in what constitutes a normal mission for SG-1._

_Ever since we got back and sent Jonas on his way I’ve been trying to slide back into the niche my life fit in, only to realize it doesn’t exist anymore. It’s like starting over, only worse, because I was officially dead for a year. I’ve got a death certificate, no credit, no money, no roots. No family to come back to._

_It’s only worse when I talk to people, because either they look at me like a ghost come back from the dead (which I am, in a way) or a glass statue, liable to shatter at the smallest provocation. I can understand their possessiveness, and even the kid gloves, but it makes me feel more out of sync than ever._

_Everything is so different. The dynamic here at the SGC has changed dramatically, as have the people in it. SG-1 is more General Hammond’s advisers than ever before, with Jack his second in command in more ways than he ever was while I was still around._

_I don’t want to sound like a wilting prima donna looking for sympathy, because that’s not what this is about. It’s the plain and honest truth._

_They’ve all moved on._

_It’s stupid, it’s petty and it’s pathetic, but I can’t help but feel that my niche is gone because it was filled with cement and smoothed over after I died. The need for my expertise has been phased out of SG-1 – where before they were a first contact team who found new cultures and contacted new allies, now they’ve become this tangled web of Advising Council for the General, purveyor of weapons, and back-up team for sticky extractions. I’ve read all the file reports and can honestly say that had I still been alive, there would have been no real use for me last year._

_My expertise and knowledge on culture and language has no use here anymore. I know that. The anthropology team has existed just fine without me, which in fact leads me to my current dilemma. Yes, maybe there’s a little bit of self pity thrown in there, and probably some need. I’m human just like anyone else. I can’t help but feel that my return has stepped on some toes; I can’t help but feel that there isn’t a place for me here anymore, if there ever was to begin with._

_Everything is... different. Teal'c is different... Jack is different. They moved on after my death, took on a new fourth, had adventures without me. I wonder if they'd been better off with Jonas, not this shell of a man with a past as mysterious to him as any new planet, carrying with him enough issues to fill a newsstand._

"Dannniel, whatcha doing?"

_I’ve come to be thankful of the fact that Jack’s got enough issues to fill every newsstand in Washington DC._

"Hey, Jim."

Despite being... well, _Jack_ , Jack had always been a sun unto himself. Life orbited him, drawing people in with an ease that always surprised Daniel when he thought about it, considering the way he and Jack met. Jack was the kind of man who offered his company easily, always had a smile and smart aleck remark waiting, and thumped Daniel between the shoulder blades when his body forgot that it was alive now and needed to breathe.

"Hilarious! That’ll never get old," Jack replied with his usual salty humor, flinging himself into the chair opposite Daniel’s.

He picked up two pencils and began a drummer beat on the edge of Daniel’s work bench, as if a clay jar from the Mesopotamian civilization wasn’t sitting in front of him. Daniel vaguely considered rescuing it. "Still writing in that journal thing?"

Unfortunately. "MacKenzie seems to think that it’ll help me get over my, uh, issues."

Jack heaved an enormous snort, which brought a real smile to Daniel’s face on pure reflex. "That guy couldn’t diagnose a guy in drag."

"Though he’d be the first to recommend a Section 8."

Jack grinned in that purely mischievous way of his. "You know, I still say we could rig up a nice still in Carter’s lab. No one would ever know."

"And cook up moonshine martinis?"

"Oh yeah. ‘Dry, arid, barren, desiccated, veritable dust bowl martinis. Martinis that could be declared a disaster area’."

"With a single black market olive?"

"Bingo. Probably go over big, though I’m thinking General Hammond might frown on SGC teams hitting the gate three sheets to the wind." Jack snorted, and looked at Daniel with that mix of amusement and confusion he’d worn since Daniel’s return. "How you can spout off pop trivia but fail to remember your own birthday is a mystery to me, by the way."

"Priority?"

"You’re a regular stand up tonight, aren’t you?"

"Academics are known for two things – their rampant sexual escapades and their over-the-top humor."

"I never would have taken you for the ‘rampant sexual’ type."

"There’s a lot you don’t know about me." Daniel paused thoughtfully. "In fact, there’s a lot I don’t know about me."

Jack’s snorted. "Scared of uncovering some deep, dark, sordid sexual past?"

"In a matter of speaking."

Which was true, in a way. More than true, if he was honest with himself. Daniel was living in this quasi-permanent state of absolute knee-knocking terror that he would uncover something he wasn’t capable of dealing with. The death of his wife had whacked him on his ass, of course, but her memory was filled with a sharp grief, as opposed to the all consuming fear Daniel could feel with the smallest memory. Facing death in the eye unflinchingly like the stupid young buck he’d been, for example. He hadn’t known what it was to die, to kill, to fight. So naive, so young.

Daniel picked his journal back up, scanned the last page he’d written, and would have added, _Enough issues to fill every newsstand in Washington DC and give everyone a mysterious pain in their ass at the same time,_ but Jack said, "So, we’re going to dinner."

Well, that was news. "What?"

"What?"

"...what?"

"Dinner." Jack kicked off from Daniel’s bookshelf and spun in the chair. Savior of the world, all around good guy, American Hero. Certified two year old. "You know. The meal at the end of the day that’s generally quite large, steak-like, and accompanied by a big glass of your poison of choice. Get changed, and grab your coat – it’s chilly out. And hurry it up, all right? Teal’c needs his fiber."

A dozen excuses came to Daniel’s lips, but Jack held up a finger and wagged it in Daniel’s face mid-spin. "Ah, ah! None of that. You’ve been holed up down here for weeks. Now be a good little linguist and go get changed." He paired the comment with a smirk. Condescending ass. "Something nice."

Blue or green, big boy? Daniel could even untuck them from his boots.

"I can’t, Jack, sorry. I’m working on that jar you seem bent on using for your drum line – Queen, right? SG-3 brought it back with them from PX2-41Q. It’s fascinating actually – the writing on it seems to be a mixture of ancient Egyptian and Sumerian cuneiform, but it’s a much more advanced language than what we’ve come across before," _Aaand your eyes are practically glazed over._ Typical. At least Jack had the grace to look ashamed. "Well, needless to say, it’s important."

"Not as important as it will be tomorrow, I’m sure. No use, Dannyboy." Jack jumped to his feet, pencils clattering on the table, and clapped Daniel’s shoulder. He smelled like pine, earth, and pure Jack. Daniel was a wee bit alarmed he’d taken the time in his thought process to catalogue it. Way too much coffee, Dr. Jackson. "And just for the record, you’re not getting around me this time. Got anything that isn’t a BDU?"

No, as a matter of fact. It must have shown on his face, because before Daniel could get a word in edgewise Jack was leading him out the door, shutting off the lights on his way. "I’ve got some clothes at my place that’ll fit you."

"Jack, I–"

"Nope! Not listening to it this time. You’ve given me every excuse in the book short of dying again, and I expect that one’ll be any day. I’m on to you, mister, and you’d better not many any plans for the weekend because, God willing the Tok’ra don’t want anything life threatening, we’ve been cleared for downtime and we’re going fishing. The bass are _huge_ this time of year."

Daniel had been railroaded over all of his life, and dammit, he wasn’t standing for it now. He dug his heels in just as Jack dragged him out into the hall. "Jack, they’re that big because you fail to catch them. Besides, I can’t – I’ve got work to do."

Jack spared him a deeply disgusted look but didn’t stop pulling. "Seems all you’ve had is work since you came back, Daniel. I know Jonas was kind of lazy, but he wasn’t that lazy. Just very annoying." He paused. "Very, _very_ annoying. Unbelievably annoying. _Unspeakably_ annoying."

"Maybe I’ve been _trying_ to get back into things, ever think of that?" Daniel said, but didn’t try to pull away again. It was hopeless, anyway. Once a man got dragged into Jack’s orbit, it was damn near impossible to get out of it. Like a planet. ....or an asteroid, hell bent on colliding with the Earth.

"Daniel, if you get any more ‘into’ things you’d be crawling up the collective asses of the entire anthropology department."

"Slackers."

And then Jack had to smile that absolutely disarming grin of his that made him age from petulant two year old to mischievous twelve year old; the smile that turned Daniel’s resolve to butter. When that grin was aimed at him it was easier to deflect said asteroid than not cave under the weight of dimples a mile wide and the sweet, big brown eyes. Hound dog eyes. "They don’t have the big brain you do, you know."

"So you think I have a big brain?"

"Oh, you’ve got a huge brain, it’s just that common sense got lost under all those book smarts and TV trivia a long time ago."

"Nice to know you’ve got enough common sense for the both of us."

Jack sniffed dramatically, but rather than continue the game he glanced at Daniel with something close to pride. "Remembering more, aren’t you?"

Dammit, Jack.

Daniel shrugged and glanced at his boots, pushing his hands into his pockets (finding ten cents, a page of wadded up notes from earlier, his favorite black pen and a ball of lint) as he was all but herded into the elevators. The last thing he wanted to do was talk to Jack about his memory, and lack thereof in some places, because even Daniel hadn’t had the guts to analyze what was happening in his own head. Self preservation. He’d woken up in a cold sweat more times than he cared to think about.

It was only because Jack looked so hopeful that made Daniel talk. Jack should have felt proud – Daniel hadn’t told anyone, not even MacKenzie, what was happening in his head.

"It comes back in bits and pieces. Sometimes I have no idea what it is I’m remembering until other memories come back and I can put it into context."

"Like?"

"Since when do you want to know?"

"Since now." Jack waved a hand in his direction, as if that explained everything.

Funny enough, it did.

"Well..." Daniel trailed off as the elevator dinged. A herd of SF’s crowded in on their way down the mountain for evening watch, so Daniel waited until they’d signed out and were stepping off the base into the early evening Colorado night to talk. Jack had been right – the air was crisp. In a few more weeks it would be cold enough to snow.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t been up to the surface. Janet insisted he at least go breathe fresh air for fifteen minutes every day and get a bit of sunshine, so his immune system (the pathetic dregs of it) wouldn’t grow too accustomed to filtered air and clean uniforms. Nor was it that he was scared of what he’d see, because he’d lived for the last two months on a planet where he’d been nothing but outdoors. It was that... he hadn’t known any better to be scared of such wide, open space, where there were too many possibilities and too many memories.

The fragile bits of his mind couldn’t take it. Trees reminded him of Chicago, Sarah, the mountain and Jack’s cabin. Grass reminded him of his mother in one of the numerous desert oasis they’d found on their travels, wild lotus blossoms in her hair and her sparkling blue eyes alight with mischief behind those familiar horn rims.

Looking at things meant seeing memories flash through his mind, remembering details he’d forgotten and had to fight to catalogue into the mess the fabric of his memory had become. Everything he’d looked at those first few days had been more sensory input than he could stand, and had left him weak and shaken in the sanctity of his office.

He hadn’t gone off base, yet. He hadn’t been cleared for it till recently, and had no drive to leave anyway.

Until now.

Jack was quiet beside him, walking steadily along as if he didn’t have a care in the world – just another team night out with a reunited friend. Daniel wished it could only be so simple, but in his experience, most things never were.

He glanced over at Jack, hating the silence, even if it was comfortable. Silence made him think of tombs and crypts, and tombs and crypts made him think about his own death.

And _that_ was something he didn’t want to think about.

"Jack, whatever happened to my stuff?"

Jack glanced at him with a mild look of surprise. It wasn’t unexpected. Daniel hadn’t so much as inquired over the artifacts he’d once had at home – millions of dollars worth of history he couldn’t bear to part with. "We sold your apartment and most of your stuff. Furniture, all that. Kept the antiques in storage."

"Where’d the money go?"

"Charity."

Well, that made him feel a little better. Someone had benefited from his death, however minutely. "And my car?"

"We gave it to Cassie. She’d been making noises about wanting one, and after you died..." He trailed off. "You’ve got to see the way she’s got it. She painted the whole thing tan, put hieroglyphics on the sides, and decked out the inside Egyptian style. She calls it her Indiana Jackson Dune Buggy."

Daniel was glad she was getting some use out of it, but it made him feel like crap for asking. Not that he’d been attached to the hunk of junk – he’d bought it when he moved to Colorado Springs and needed a cheep, reliable car to get him to the Mountain and the grocery store. No, what made him feel terrible was the fact that Cassie was old enough to drive, and he had missed it.

His brain was so filled with muddled regrets that he almost ran into Jack when he stopped beside his truck. Enormous, black, sleek. It matched Jack’s personality to the T, so when Jack bought it two years ago Daniel hadn’t said a word about the somewhat emasculating lush comforts. Though the self-heating seats in the dead of Colorado winter were incredibly nice.

He, Jack and Teal’c had driven around in this thing before. Many times, in fact. Daniel, being the smallest of the three, had always gotten center seat, which the guys had teased him mercilessly about until the first night they got stinking drunk. A Daniel with nowhere to heave his guts up is an unhappy Daniel.

He considered asking Jack if he’d ever gotten the stain out of the carpet, thought better of it, and climbed in.

High. Odd. The seats were comfortable and warm, the cold, creamy leather sliding across his BDU’s. Jack turned the heat on as soon as he got the ignition started, and a pleasant gust of warm air blew Daniel’s hair from his forehead.

He was completely, uncomfortably aware that Jack was watching him, but tried to keep his attention on his knees, hands, anything that would keep from encouraging Jack to ask the difficult questions Daniel knew his friend had been thinking about. Too many, and too much. Daniel didn’t want to think about it if he didn’t have to. Maybe that made him a coward – maybe it was self preservation – but he couldn’t think about it and keep his tattered mind somewhat together.

Jack took it in stride, because that was just the type of man he was. Instead of asking the obvious – "Why haven’t you bought a house?" and "A car?" or God forbid, "Why haven’t you asked about Abydos?" – Jack merely glanced at him with those eternally compassionate eyes of his and said, "What were you saying earlier, about context?"

Daniel glanced up from the stitching he’d been picking at on the edge of his knee. "Oh...well–"

The truck lurched forward and Daniel saw his life flash before his eyes. The countless cups of coffee he’d drunk came up to crowd his throat, stomach dropping down somewhere by his knees. Or possibly his feet. Maybe through the truck floor to plop on the pavement. His head swam just like it did the moments after stepping out of the Stargate and he found himself pushing his head to his knees, breathing raggedly with the wretched seat belt digging into his collar and belly.

The warm width of Jack’s palm stroked his back carefully, patting him as if he’d known this was coming. "Easy, there, Danny." Soft, warm. Lulling. "Frasier said you’d get nauseated for a few minutes. Been too long since you went zipping anywhere."

"You didn’t think this a good thing to mention before we left?"

"Of course not. Then you wouldn’t have left."

"You are such a shit."

"Thank you." Jack tipped his head and met Daniel’s slightly crooked, glaring gaze with amusement. "You all right, now?"

"Just don’t ask questions if I tell you to pull over."

"Fair enough." Jack waited until Daniel had straightened back up, fixed the seat belt, and got comfortable again before starting the truck back up. The first move made Daniel want to curl up and groan, but before he could move back into said fetal position Jack prompted, "Context?".

"Context, right." He took a deep breath as Jack gingerly – and for him, this was gingerly – pulled the car out again.

Contrary to popular belief, Daniel had been quite the wild child in college. Looking at him, no one would realize that he’d gotten his PhDs going to class half asleep, living out of his car and eating a lot of dried soup.

He’d never told another living soul about his youthful exploits – except, obviously, Jack, who upped the volume of the radio the smallest bit.

That it just so happened to be Queen didn’t miss Daniel with the irony.

"I saw them in New York, you know."

"Queen?"

"Yeah, when I was seventeen, and again at the memorial concert at Wembley Stadium, with David Bowie and Guns N’ Roses, right after Freddie died."

"I saw that on TV."

"You probably saw me. I was the one with the hair down to my shoulder blades."

"Oh, so that was you." The broad grin Jack gave him made his day. He nudged Daniel gently with his elbow. "Context, Daniel."

They cruised much slower than Jack ever moved the truck, which was normally somewhere around the sound barrier, and made their way through the lot to the electric fence and the guards waiting to sign them out. "I got a flash of these...white skinned, naked little aliens, a few weeks ago."

"Asgard?" Jack asked as he handed back the clipboard to the SF at the gate. It opened without a sound and let them through to the dark, winding road out of the mountain and down into Colorado Springs.

"No, they were human... sort of anyway. I knew it was something I should have remembered, a mission we’ve been on, and I couldn’t place it until a few days ago, when I remembered that they sang to their plants. Symbiotic relationship. We hurt them by hurting their plant."

"Creepy little guys. SG-15 went to check on them while you were out floating around getting into mischief."

That was news. "They okay?"

"Yep. The plant healed itself and the machines turned off by themselves. Carter went with them. They wanted to see you, though."

"Me?"

Jack grinned, eyes trained on the road. Daniel didn’t want him to look anywhere else. "Oh yeah. Smiling and waving and pretending they were UAV’s." He snorted. "Rudimentary language, huh?"

"You should have seen how I communicated with Chaka."

"Wasn’t the first time, either, you know. Lots of people asked where you were." He glanced over. "Did you think no one would?"

Daniel didn’t _want_ to think about that. "I don’t know."

Silence fell between them. The days were getting shorter.... winter would be here before long, and then it would be cold all the time. For now, the early evening sky was radiant, clear and crisp, with the night’s first stars shining down like small beacons, much like the internal lights of the truck, neon green in the dark between them. It was familiar and strange all at the same time, and something niggled at the back of Daniel’s mind. Ringing a bell that there was a significant...something that had happened in this truck, other than he and Jack getting drunk.

Jack mistook his silence for doubt, and spoke up from the driver’s side. When he was uncomfortable, Jack’s voice had a deep timber to it, rumbling in the back of his throat and in his chest to make him sound almost... husky. "Look, I don’t know if anyone has told you this, but you made the right choice, you know. It was better than dying, and better than the life you would have lived if Jacob had healed you. Besides... even if you couldn’t do much while you were a glowy thing, at least you were there."

"Yeah, and a fat lot of good it did any of us." Daniel answered darkly. "Anubis is still hanging around, half ascended, and Abydos is gone."

"Yeah, but you risked everything... you were there when it counted. You came through, even knowing how much trouble you’d get in, even knowing the possibility that you’d get chucked out of Ancients Anonymous. That means something."

"So you say."

"So I say," Jack repeated. "What else?"

"What else?"

Jack nodded easily. "Context."

Daniel bit his lip. There was one memory that he continuously thought about, because it popped up at the oddest times. Looking at his artifacts, taking a piss, eating cheesecake. He could go for days without remembering it, but then it would take him over and he’d be shaken to the core by the emotion and heat he felt each and every time.

"Daniel?"

"Yeah... sorry. It’s just... personal."

"That never stopped you before."

"I was never a once-dead amnesiac, either."

There was that mischievous grin again. "C’mon, kid. Try me."

Jack would never give Daniel’s memories and secrets up to anyone. He kept secrets like nobody’s business, which seemed right because... well, he was Special Ops and working for the most secretive military instillation known to man. "There’s... this memory. A dream, maybe, I’m not sure. I can’t put it into context because I have no idea what it is, and can’t fit it in anywhere. It doesn’t really fit with everything else."

Jack was listening, his face calm and attentive. Good. Okay. "What’s it about?"

"I’m not sure. All I get is a... scene. I wake up in a bed that isn’t mine. It’s comfortable, and I know I belong there, but I have no idea where ‘there’ is. I’m not on Abydos with Shau’re – this is different. It isn’t my bedroom, either – there’s this God awful poster of the ‘dogs playing poker’ painting across from the bed. I get annoyed every time I see it."

Jack snorted, loudly, but the amusement didn’t reach his eyes. Daniel wondered if he’d done the right thing in confiding in his friend, and shifted uncomfortably. "Been sleeping around the universe while you were glowy, Dannyboy?"

"Unless the people of Abydos have become the unwitting fans of tacky art, no."

"Trampy glowy thing."

Daniel glared.

"What else?"

"About the dream? That’s it. It’s not so much where I’m at though, but what I feel."

Jack arched a brow. "Feel?"

"Yeah." You overgrown twelve year old. Don’t make a face. "I think it’s..." Daniel could smell himself turn crimson. "Uh, the bed of my lover."

Because Daniel wasn’t sure if said lover was a girlfriend or a boyfriend, and wasn’t that a can of worms.

That caught Jack’s attention. "Why do you say?"

Daniel cleared his throat and looked down at his hands. "Because of how I feel. I can smell my favorite coffee somewhere in the house, the sheets... and I feel loved. All the way down to the gut."

Saying any more than that was unacceptable. Daniel wasn’t usually a touchy-feely guy, and rarely with Colonel Hard Ass. Jack was already uncomfortably close to him, sitting way inside the barriers Daniel had erected for the rest of the world. He always had been.

Tough Nut was watching him as he did an Indy 500 around a steep curve. "Can I ask you something?"

"Yes, but I can’t promise to know the answer."

Jack sat silent, considering that. They were driving into the outer fringes of the city, enough so that the fluorescent street lights lit the dark night. Said light flashed over Jack’s face, casting it in shadow and illuminating it simultaneously. Daniel could imagine hundreds of people seeing Jack’s face just like that, on night time maneuvers and in the cockpits of air planes during the Gulf. He wondered if all the people who had seen Jack just like this, sitting in the dark with his large hands calmly guiding the machine under him like a fifth limb, had felt as safe as Daniel did in this moment. There was a calm certainty about Jack, a warmth and tranquility that radiated from his soul. There always had been, even when he’d been devastated over the death of his son when they first met.

Daniel always felt safe.

"How much do you remember, before you died?"

That was a strange question. "You know I don’t remember much."

"No, no... I mean, before you died. The few days and weeks before."

"Oh." Daniel frowned thoughtfully. "What makes you ask?"

"Just curious."

Jack was a skilled liar, but Daniel was just as skilled at reading Jack. There was a reason he was lying, but if he didn’t want to say, Daniel wouldn’t push. "Well... I don’t remember anything. Janet says it’s normal, as normal as my kind of situation can be, anyway. I’ve got a few weeks of black space that she says will probably never come back."

"At all?"

Jack’s tone made Daniel look up. "At all. Why are you asking?"

"No reason."

Yeah, right. "I get flashes sometimes, but never anything substantial. Just pain... terrible pain." Such awful, consuming pain. "I can’t remember faces, or words. Just the pain."

The look Jack gave him meant something, but for the life of him Daniel didn’t know what it might be. "That’s all?"

"You can’t fathom what it was like, Jack. I wanted to die so badly, if it meant that I didn’t have to feel it anymore."

Excruciating, mind numbing, soul destroying pain. More pain than Daniel could ever imagine feeling. It hadn’t just been agony – it had torn him apart and made him beg Janet, in his darkest hour, to end it.

Jack was watching him out of the corner of his eye. The back roads Jack liked to take eclipsed his face in shadow, but Daniel could feel those eyes on him anyway. "Has anyone talked to you about what happened after you...?"

"After I?"

"You know. Went glowy."

No. No one had said a word to him.

"What do you know?"

"I Ascended. Did some great stuff....and some not so great stuff."

Jack inclined his head in the dark. The hand closest to Daniel, sitting on the gear shift, was highlighted green by the radio console. "Sums it up nicely. Fact is, Daniel, that you did it because you knew you could help. You chose to leave."

So Daniel had suspected. Oma had come to him and given him a choice. From what Sam had told him about the Ancients, one just didn’t get glowy without some serious thought going into it first.

"I hated you for it."

Oh, God. "What?"

Jack’s eyes burned into his. "I hated you for leaving. Couldn’t believe you were bailing out on me, giving up – that you’d rather be Ascended – even if it meant you were sick and crippled for the rest of your life."

Daniel felt as if he’d been slapped. He’d left because he knew he could made a difference. Without anyone having to tell him, Daniel knew he’d changed the balance in the war, working in the background, playing an eternal game of chess so that when his friends attacked, that balance was in their favor.

He’d given his life for them, in every way.

An unbearable sense of regret and loneliness crushed through Daniel’s chest. Where once he’d have shot back with a slew of words that would have de-balled Jack in ten seconds flat, now he looked out the window at the cold farm land sitting just beyond his reach. He simply couldn’t deal with it.

He should have never agreed to this. His office was safe, with his books and artifacts and work waiting to be done all around him. Busy work, doing translations his anthropologists could have done without him, until he was cleared through the government and could take his place as head of the archeology team and the fourth member of SG-1.

No, he couldn’t deal with it. That was, until Jack’s hand moved from the gear shift to cover Daniel’s, where it lay on his knee, and squeezed.

Jack’s hands were a glory unto themselves – enormous, masculine, peppered with callouses. Workman’s hands. Hands that had seen everything, from explosives to aliens. Hands that could be infinitely gentle. Hands that could kill. Nothing like Daniel’s, which were long fingered and almost delicate, but had been trained by Jack’s to defend himself. To take life, as an unavoidable last resort, only if necessary.

He looked at their hands, intertwined there on his lap, and knew he should have been uncomfortable.

"That lasted for about, oh, a week, before reality crushed in." He looked over. "It’s been bad, Daniel. Don’t tell her I told you this, ‘cause she’ll never forgive me, but Carter cried every day for two months straight. To add insult to injury we got stuck with Jonas who, for being such a smart guy? Is as dumb as dog shit." Jack snorted. "You’re only tolerable on a good day, but Jonas..."

"Oh, come on. He was a nice enough guy." Even to Daniel, his voice sounded tinny and hollow.

"No, he was an idiot with a high IQ, who’d spent his entire life working in a lab. God I hate his type, with their petri dishes and their theories..."

If Jack noticed that Daniel wasn’t letting his hand go, he didn’t say anything. Daniel stopped listening to him and concentrated on Jack’s calloused fingers wrapped around his – the same length as Daniel’s own but seemingly much larger. They were rough and real, from the nibbled fingernails to the scar on one thumb he’d gotten from ricocheted shrapnel on PX7-4K3. Sprinkled with dark hair interspersed with blond hairs from too much sun and time, his fingers were long, thick, warm and alive in ways Daniel had forgotten things could be.

In sharp contrast, Daniel’s own hands were alien. Oh, the flesh was the same, the scars and bumps and irregularities about them were there just as he remembered. He still had the same freckle at the base of his middle finger on his left hand, still had the scars from all the IV’s he’d been hooked up to during his time with the SGC on his right. The veins were still big and blue, the nails still square.

Bit it was different. He didn’t know how else to explain it, other than his skin felt... new. Changed. Different. He felt new, like an old car with a new paint job and new seats, leather this time with seat warmers just like the one he was sitting on. Upgraded. The modernized model.

The insistent droning of Jack’s low voice stopped.

Daniel’s heart fluttered as he looked at his fingers entwined with Jack’s, and for a terrifying instant he thought he could see his flesh glow. Golden, bright, soft. It would only be a matter of time before he was back with Oma, doing whatever they’d done together. Taking away all the precious memories he’d regained away from him, permanently this time.

Taking him away from Jack again.

He couldn’t get enough air. He gasped for it, struggling to pull it into himself, though it felt like a hippo had taken residence on his chest. Before Daniel could even contemplate raising an alarm that yes, he had defied death only to choke on his own spit, he heard gravel crunch, the engine die, and then...warmth.

Maybe later when Daniel was back in his right mind he’d find this humiliating. In fact, it was a given he’d never live it down. He didn’t mean to fall apart, but Jack was a pro at comfort and even better at hugs. It was ten times better than Jack simply holding his hand, and ten times more horrifying than anything else. The rich scent of pine, sweat, and SGC laundry detergent that always clung to Jack’s clothes, even if he’d washed them at home, filled Daniel’s senses like a drug. So soothing, so easy, so good.

So very dangerous.

The familiar sensation of stubble and hair pressed to his skin warmed him down to the roots. It was real – Jack’s unshaved cheek pressed to his temple, gently rubbing, and his effortlessly soft gray hair tangled in Daniel’s clinging fingers. Effortlessly real.

Daniel would later conclude that though he’d once thought it physically impossible to have so much grief inside any one person, he raised the bar like a real trooper. All Jack had to do was thread his fingers through the spikes of Daniel’s hair and pull him to his chest for Daniel to lose the thin thread of control he’d been hanging onto.

He sobbed. No other word for it. As mortifying as it was (and oh, God, it was mortifying), he cried his not unsubstantial guts out into Jack’s shoulder. No matter how much he struggled to wrangle it all in and get a hold of himself, Jack merely squeezed tighter, held harder, stroked more firmly through his hair until Daniel could do nothing but sag against him. Held him with the seemingly endless grace and patience that Jack had by the bucketful where it concerned other people and rarely for Daniel.

So much for keeping Jack at arm’s length.

Daniel’s brain was a fragile thing at the moment, and he wasn’t too proud to admit it. The seemingly endless strength he’d carried throughout his life had deserted him, and it shamed him right down to the marrow. Daniel had learned early on that the weak and the weak minded got nowhere in life, too afraid to step outside of their door every day, and had vowed from an early age that he would never let himself get to a point where he’d be afraid of his own shadow. It was why he’d worked himself into the ground at an early age, why he had two PhDs and why he had no problems being a pain in the ass when he knew what he was fighting for the right thing.

He’d never let anyone stand in his way, but he had let his teammates stand beside him. Jack had seen him at his absolute worst – addicted to the sarcophagus, grieving after his wife died, naked, tied up, beaten. Jack knew the most intimate details of Daniel’s very existence, just like Daniel knew the intimate details of Jack’s. It was a damned disconcerting thing. There really weren’t words for what they had, other than Jack being his best friend.

And yet, he was much more than that.

It was an echo. A mere mirage of a memory. Daniel stiffened in Jack’s arm’s and pressed his face into the soft leather of Jack’s jacket.

_Enormous hills, bowed under gravity and the tiny grains of dirt, dipped and swayed across the landscape like ocean water. Looking at the rolling dunes, no one would ever guess that hidden in the magnificent depths were treasures, full with history, and people who had been laid to rest millennia ago._

_The air, ripe with the night time scents of camels and unwashed men, was comforting in a way Daniel had never been able to explain. He only knew that those smells, paired with the sweet leather of his father’s battered explorer’s jacket and the soft musk of lard soap they all used, was more home to him than the house his parents owned in Cairo. He could identify what his father was looking at by merely leaning in close – his father had often told him that artifacts had the scent of the past on them, and told him silly stories of archeologists believing they could hunt for treasure by the sniff of their nose, like hounds._

_Daniel’s first dig with his parents wasn’t a dig at all – it was an archeological survey of the pyramids at Giza, for the Egyptian government. Their last evening there, his father gently pulled him to his side, seated high on one of the many dunes facing down to the pyramids, and gave Daniel the one kernel of fatherly advice he’d gotten a chance to impart on his young son._

_"A life devoid of love is no life at all, Danny. No matter what you do with it, remember that it can be made all the better by love," his father whispered to him in soft, flowing Arabic, with the scent of the dessert around them and the moon glowing down on what had once been a grand civilization. All that stood now were the pyramids, enormous in their grandeur and power. "No matter what you love, remember that a man is as great as the circle of friends and family around him."_

_"Do you love, daddy?" Daniel whispered from his father’s soft black hair._

_The strong arm around him squeezed. "More than you could ever possibly know, Amir."_

The love was much different, that which he held for his father and the love he had for Jack, but the scent, the comfort, were all the same. He felt safer here in Jack’s arms than he ever had anywhere else, because he knew that Jack would protect him, and let himself be protected in return.

Love.

It could have been anything from a dream to indigestion, or even the consumption of too much caffeine and not enough sleep. Whatever it was, in that moment when Daniel lifted his head, wet and runny and covered with the slime everyone produced on a crying jag, he saw Jack. As in... saw him.

In the deep shadows of the car, with nothing but a sliver of the moon and a sky full of stars to accent him, Jack was the most beauti–... _wonderful_ thing Daniel had ever seen. His deep brown eyes were black in the dark, but the soft shape of them, crinkled with laugh lines, made Daniel think of a happy old hound dog. His mouth was firm and thin, but so expressive it could say a million things without uttering a word. His long, square jaw was strangely familiar, from each laughing line to the scars and freckles Jack had sprinkled here and there.

It was crazy, insane, and possibly the weirdest compulsion Daniel had ever had, but for a second there in the midst of his brain meltdown, he wanted nothing more than to reach up and skim his lips over that jaw. Could have been because Jack was looking at him with an unguarded expression Daniel had only ever seen directed at Sam, filled with a warmth that Jack hadn’t shown him since he was a twenty six year old buck with his head full of dreams and his naivete written on his sleeve.

Holy Hannah.

The moment passed, and they were Jack and Daniel again. Jack ran a hand through the mess of Daniel’s hair, pushing it off of his hot forehead and skimming his thumb down his temple. "You look like shit, Dannyboy," Jack said. It was stupid but so Jack that Daniel couldn’t help a little snort, and he pulled his streaked glasses off to knuckle his eyes. Jack merely watched him quietly. "You started getting pale there for a second, and I’m guessing it’s not from the car."

"No, not from the car."

Jack dropped his arms from Daniel’s shoulders and gave him his space. Which was nice, because Daniel could breathe now that he was out of the crushing grip, but not so nice, because he was teetering on a rope with nowhere to fall, and how melodramatic did that sound? Well dammit, he’d been right. He did have every right to it.

"Wanna talk about it?"

The funny thing was, of all the people who had asked him that question since his return, Jack was the first person Daniel didn’t want to mutilate with the backside of his tongue. Maybe because even in the dark, Daniel could see the hideous wet spot he’d left on Jack’s shoulder. Melodramatic and wet. Aces, Jackson. "It’s stupid," he dismissed, but when Jack arched a brow, he sighed nasally. "Well, it _is_ stupid."

"Doesn't matter. Haven't seen you go off like that since you were Darth Jackson, addicted to that damn sarcophagus."

Thanks for the reminder, Jack.

"It started when I touched you--should I be offended?"

Yes. "I don’t want to talk about it. Okay?"

"No," Jack said, with a stubborn Irish glint in his eye Daniel could have recognized from ten paces. That look was all too familiar, considering Daniel saw it on every mission they went on. "No, it’s not okay, Daniel, but if it were me coming back from a stint of being glowy with my head on backwards, then I’d probably be in a rubber room. So, I can wait until you’re ready to open that trap of yours, when you remember how quickly you can give your ego a boost by watching my eyes glaze over."

Daniel snorted, loudly, and that won a smile from Jack. "We’re five minutes from the house. What do you say to steak? They’ve opened this great new place off of Main...."

And they were off, like Daniel hadn’t just broken down and Jack hadn’t just looked at him with... all right, if Daniel was honest, if Jack hadn’t just looked at him with love in his eyes. That’s exactly what it had been, but not in a smoldering way. More like the way Shau’re had once looked at him over dinner, or their chores, as if she had a secret and no one knew.

That Jack could look at him like that and then launch into the buddy routine, giving him his space and letting his ego recover without too much bruising, was... well, it was Jack. It was just that something... felt off. Not that everything hadn’t felt off since Daniel’s return from on-high, because he was sure he was practically living in the twilight zone. But still.

He let himself take Jack’s offer to tune him out, and looked out the window. Fall had come to Colorado Springs and the trees, the bright red and orange of them, were brilliant even by the light of the moon. Daniel had grown up racing dune buggies and digging for scorpions in Egypt, then trooping off from family to family through his adolescent years in places like California, where there were two seasons – hot and not so hot. This was his seventh year living in Colorado – he should have been used to autumn here, but he wasn’t. Probably because he’d spent more time off-world doing things that were still somewhat alluding him. Not that other planets weren’t freezing cold, of course, but it was just... different.

Everything was different.

He wasn’t in the least bit surprised to see Sam’s little white car sitting in the driveway when they got to Jack’s home. It had been a coup to get him out of the Mountain, after all. First degree kidnap, and here Daniel thought he’d learned to say ‘no’ at an early age.

Jack pulled the truck into the driveway beside her car and shut the engine off. Daniel couldn’t quite pinpoint why it felt strange seeing Jack do the same thing he had a million times before – shut the engine off, wiggle the key chain, snap off his belt all in one smooth movement. Which he had, of course, but it was still... strange. Daniel was in no way that comfortable with anything on that level, and to see Jack so relaxed in his movements was disconcerting to say the least.

He’d fallen quiet and was watching Daniel carefully from the corner of his eye.

Sweet old hound dog.

"Jack?"

"Yeah?"

"It was because of your hands."

He turned his head. "What?"

Daniel looked down at his own. The porch light was on, the living room light glowing in the window. Sam and Teal’c were already waiting, but Daniel had to get this off of his chest or he never would. And he wanted to tell _Jack_ – _not_ MacKenzie, not Dr. Frasier – just Jack. "I don’t know why. They were just... real."

"Real."

Daniel glanced up. The closest he got to Jack’s face was his lapel. "Yeah. Real. I’m never going to be the same, not like I was. I don’t think I _can_ be... that man is gone. What I can try to be is me, as I am, without pretenses. The thing is, I don’t know if anyone is going to like the man I am."

"What, you mean the prissy, bitchy, arrogant, condescending, flaky Dr. Jackson?" Jack asked, without a hint of malice. "Hate to break it to you, but everyone already knows that." He tipped his head. "That doesn’t explain what you mean by real."

Dammit. How the hell could Daniel explain something he didn’t understand himself? He glanced up again – Jack’s chin this time – and struggled to find words that had never been difficult in coming to his tongue. "Your hands... are real. I’ve seen your hands a million times, cocking guns and throwing knives and trying to play Queen on six thousand year old jars with my pencils. You’ve got all the same scars, and all the same freckles, and all the same half-bitten nails you forget to stop chewing when you’re nervous. Those hands have greeted the Asgard, stopped wars, saved the Earth, and scratched your ass, usually all in the same day." That got a smug smile out of Jack, which Daniel matched, albeit his was shakier. "That’s _real_ to me, Jack."

Jack studied Daniel as closely as he’d been studying the steering wheel. "Do you think you aren’t real?"

"I don’t know what to think anymore," he confessed softly. "I’m very tired, Jack. Exhausted, if you want me to be honest. Everything is so different."

"Different?"

Daniel shifted uncomfortably. "Different."

Jack paused, thoughtful, watching Daniel with that slightly knowing expression he sometimes got that made him look more like a wise old Colonel than the smart ass Daniel knew he was. Now that was disconcerting. "You trust me?"

As if Daniel had to think about that. "With everything but my artifacts."

"Hilarious." Jack rolled his eyes. "Just trust me, okay? No matter how much it sucks, trust that I won’t let anything happen to you, and that I might know what to do to help you. All right?"

"Famous last words, Jack."

He snorted, even if the amusement didn’t quite reach his eyes. "Come on, before Teal’c tries to eat my wax fruit."

"Fruit?"

"Yep. Famous barbecue of 1999 – please tell me you remember him eating the wax fruit," Jack said, as Daniel closed the truck door behind him and they walked up the walk together.

"Vaguely..." Mosquitos, beer, Jack not knowing the meaning of moderation when it came to marinating and – "Oh, God, he ate a wax apple and he had to get his stomach pumped, right?"

Teal’c, stoic as ever, put down one of the wax bananas sitting in a bowl on the kitchen table as they walked into the house.

In all the years of knowing him, Daniel had never heard Jack laugh so hard. He threw his head back and cracked up, much to Teal’c consternation if the arched brow was anything to say. Daniel swore that man could have an entire conversation with his eyebrow. Sam grinned, rolling her eyes.

It put some of his anxiety on wearing BDU’s to Jack’s place where Teal’c and Sam both looked ready for a night out on the town to ease.

"DanielJackson," Teal’c said, bowing his head respectfully and attempting to ignore Jack’s hysterics. "It is good to see you away from the SGC."

"Decided he was getting cabin fever," Jack hooted, wiping at his eyes. All it took was one carefully mouthed ‘apple?’ from Daniel to set him off again, laughing all the way into his bedroom.

"I worry about that man," Sam said, looking radiant in a little black sweater and gray slacks. She gave Daniel his hug of the day (or rather, the fourteenth of the day) and smiled like a loving big sister. "It is good to see you out of the Mountain. You need some sun, you’re paler than me," she said, patting his arm.

Well _that_ was a well-timed remark, since Janet had warned him about vitamin D deficiency just that morning, after giving him a shot in the rear for the very same thing. His ass had to be covered in pin-point scars from that woman. "I’ve been working." Or rather, trying to prove himself.

"I know," Sam said, and as if she’d heard his private thoughts, and gave him a sisterly shove towards the stairs. "Teal’c and I are going to go get a table at the restaurant, before the wait gets too much longer. We’ll meet you there."

"Where are we going?"

"Where the margaritas are plentiful," Sam teased, wriggling her blond brows.

On second thought, maybe this hadn’t been such a terrible idea after all.

Daniel left Sam grabbing her coat and Teal’c eying the wax fruit again and made his way to the back. He’d never been in the back rooms of Jack’s home, but wasn’t in the least bit surprised to find that Jack’s (fairly nonexistent) style had prevailed. Everything was warm and country-like, which seemed absurdly homey when compared to the man who actually lived there.

A door was open at the end of the hall, lit with golden lights. Jack’s shadow passed in front of it.

_"Please, Jack, oh God!"_

_Sheer hunger ebbed them on. Daniel’s madness, from the roaring of his blood to his racing hands, begged for clothes to be shed without moving his hands from hot, perfect skin. A mouth that tasted of coffee and Fruit Loops took him under, a body that smelled clean and pure and Jack holding him crushed to a firm chest. It was a race to pleasure, leaving smashed vases and broken picture frames in their wake, a trail of clothes that led straight.... here._

Oh, fuck.

Daniel shuddered, pressing a hand to the wall to keep his balance and not do something unfortunate, like land on his scarred derriere. Surely... no. Never. Right? Jack was his best friend, hugger of crying archeologists, instigator of stupid arguments and all around American Hero with a capital H. It wasn’t like this would be the first time Daniel remembered a dream he’d mistaken for reality – he was never going to stop blushing in Siler’s presence again. That’s what this had to be. Some absolutely sick fantasizing on his part, where he was riding Jack like a horse. Daniel had never had a homosexual encounter in his life. How could he possibly know what it felt like?

A dream. Had to be. A dream where he was making out with his best friend.

Well... ‘make out’ wasn’t right ‘Moments away from having awe inspiring sex’ was much better.

Nevertheless, it left him on shaky ground, which must have shown through his body language when he entered the bedroom because Jack gave him a slightly strange look. "You all right?"

Fine, Jack. Just happened to have a gay fantasy about you just now. "Yeah, I... uh," Daniel coughed and cleared his throat, praying he wasn’t blushing. "Sam and Teal’c left. They’re gonna get to the restaurant. Sam said she’d meet us there."

"Probably for the best. She wants to go to that damn Mexican place that always gives me heartburn. Great steak, though," Jack muttered, eyes filled with good humor... and something else.

Daniel didn’t look too closely.

"Look, Jack, I wanted to tell you... uh... thank you for everything. I really appreciate this, but... you don’t have to do this."

"Do what?" Jack opened the door to his closet and walked in, muttering something to himself about ‘paisley’ that Daniel didn’t listen too close to.

"This. Clothes, and... dinner. I mean... I appreciate it, but..."

"You already said that. You like khakis, right? Thirty four waist?"

"Yeah. Jack..."

"Ah ah," he said, coming out of the closet with two pairs of pants that Daniel thought looked suspiciously like pairs he’d once owned. "These shrunk in the wash, so they should fit you at the leg now," Jack announced, all sly amusement in those brown eyes of his. He held up a blue sweater and a green polo.

_Yanking, tugging, oh God, please get it off! Soft blue cotton matching the soft silver of his hair, yanking, up, over, left with golden skin, nipples, throat – couldn’t get enough, couldn’t –_

"Sweater or shirt?"

Daniel swallowed his heart back down from its spot in his throat and abruptly sat on the edge of Jack’s bed. Damn BDU’s to the furthest reaches of hell – loose in the crotch, but not loose enough for this conversation. "Jack... you’re doing it again. Railroading me."

"Who’s railroading you?" A wriggle of the shirts. "Sweater or shirt?"

You.

Jack’s eyes narrowed. "Look, if it’s because you don’t have a dime to your somewhat long and prestigious name, don’t worry about it; we’ve got it covered. General Hammond is still working on bringing you back to life, paper wise, after all. It’s not a big deal."

God bless you, Jack O’Neill. Daniel latched onto the excuse like a grasping fish. "It is a big deal to me, Jack. I was a penniless academic for a long time. Doesn’t sit well with me, to have you pay again."

Jack watched him shrewdly, brow arched, and before he even said anything Daniel knew he hadn’t gotten off the hook. "Don’t weasel, Daniel. It isn’t about the money at all, is it? What’s bugging you?"

_Hot. More. Faster, sharper, groin on fire, pleasure singing through his body. It was too much, too damn much and he arched and screamed, the answering cry under him low and deep and spine tingling. He sank down, body opening, burning, and then such pleasure that his ear’s roared – no, Jack roared, tendons standing out in his neck and face flushed as red as his long, beautiful cock, which was slowly sinking deep inside Daniel’s body._

_Explosion._

"Daniel?"

Oh, God. There was no way he was going to hide his erection now, and Daniel did the only sane thing a man – a heterosexual man sitting here with his heterosexual best friend heterosexually – could do in this type of situation. He muscled out of his jacket and folded it over his arm, which coincidently was sitting on his lap, and prayed he wasn’t blushing. Or tensing. Or tenting. "Nothing."

Jack eyed him as if he wasn’t taking in Daniel’s one man show. A six on the Mortification-Meter, minimum. "It has to be something. What, the four of us going out? It’s not like we haven’t done that before. The day after you came back we did."

"Yeah, but I didn’t know any of you then. That... was different."

"Different. How was it different?"

"It just was, Jack. Don’t ask me how, because I don’t know," Daniel said. "This... it’s all so awkward."

"Only because you’re psyching yourself out." Jack set the shirts on the bed. "Look, I’m going to use the bathroom. You can change if you want to or not, but they may look weird at you at the Mexican place wearing BDU’s."

"Not taking ‘no’ for an answer, are you?"

"Now you’re catching on, Dannyboy!" Jack smirked and disappeared into the bathroom with his own clothes.

A moment later the shower started, and Daniel was left alone with the panic rushing through his chest. It had to be a dream. It was the only explanation. There was no way –

_Pain and pleasure intertwined, leaving Daniel breathless with his spine arched, his head thrown back, and his hands grasping the silver threads of Jack’s hair and the bed post simultaneously. Had to hang on, because if he didn’t he was sure to fly away into a million pieces._

_"That’s it, Danny, you’ve got it, slow and easy... yeah... slip down a little more, and... oh, fuck. yesss."_

_Jack buried his hiss of pleasure in Daniel’s throat, just as Daniel gasped, arched his hips, and pushed Jack in deeper. Hunger warred with pain, ecstacy with need, until they were interlaced like a pentangle, with no hopes of ever coming undone. Jack was inside him, finally inside him just as Daniel had wanted for so very long. Deep, close, pressing in, knees around Daniel’s hips and his long fingered, calloused, scarred hands holding onto Daniel’s back._

_Holding him._

God help him.

There was no way this was a dream. No way in hell. He wasn’t remembering some sick fantasy, he had _lived_ the sick fantasy, only to find it wasn’t sick at all. The bed, they’d... he and Jack had... the bed post, Daniel had held onto the bed post right there. He’d had his knees around Jack’s hips, sitting in his lap, taking Jack into his body as if he’d always wanted to. God help him, the pleasure was there in Daniel’s gut, the need, the fear, the want.

It must have been those few weeks he was missing. The hole in his memory from before his death, weeks he thought he’d never recover. Those few weeks...

Jack. Sex with Jack. Making love with Jack. Kisses and hands and orgasms and coming until he swore the top of his damn head would blow off. Weekends where they never even got out of bed. Messy, filthy, sweaty, uproariously delicious sex, with a lover who seemed to be able to read his body’s responses like an open book, in this bed. Jack had called it The Language of Daniel, and could create entire arias on the screams he could rend from Daniel’s throat as easily as plucking an instrument.

And Daniel had forgotten.

He’d lost his virginity – in _that_ way, at least – here in this bed. He’d never even considered male companionship before, but there was something about Jack and the way he talked, acted, loved, that had drawn Daniel in like a fly to a spiders web. Before he’d known it he’d been entangled in a glorious, courtmartialable affair, flying in Jack’s orbit and never happier to be anywhere in his entire life.

Sam and Teal’c knew.

_"Oh, God."_

_Daniel stopped mid thrust, eyes flying open, and stared up at Jack’s entrance hall. He sat straddling Jack on the couch, jeans and underwear shoved down, with Jack’s cock so deep inside of him he could swallow around it._

_Throw in Susan Anthony from the ninth grade and a particularly spectacular spill across the stage during his Hamlet monologue, and Daniel was looking at the stuff nightmares were made on. Mainly in the shape of Sam Carter and Teal’c._

_He wanted nothing more than to bury his face in Jack’s neck and pretend Sam and Teal’c were seeing something the sun usually didn’t shine on if his tan lines were anything to talk about. His erection wilted, mostly because his currently full rear and balls were in full view where he sat. Mortification-Meter was hitting a cool 15 on a 10 point scale. Easily the most horrifying thing that had ever happened to him – fuck the Goa’uld._

_Daniel trembled as Teal’c’s low voice urged Sam into the back of the house, and looked into Jack’s wide hound dog eyes. The bastard... had the nerve to look amused._

_Asshole._

They’d walked in on them, the night before Daniel went to Kelowna and saved the planet on forfeit of his life. Teal’c had wished them great happiness. Sam had been less accepting, but only because Jack was an asshole liable to break Daniel’s heart, then for any residual feelings she might have still felt for Jack. All in all, they’d reacted with poise and dignity, something for which he and Jack had been absurdly grateful considering the compromising position they’d found them in.

It had all been moot. Daniel had given his life for the people of Kelowna and his teammates the next day. The day after that, he’d died in agony. He’d left Jack behind.

And Daniel had forgotten.

Jack had told him in the truck that Sam cried for two months after his death, but Daniel hadn’t pin pointed what felt so off about that comment until now. She hadn’t just been crying for Daniel... she’d been crying for the pity of their loss, and for Jack, who had already lost so much.

It was too much. God, he should have stayed at the base, but discounted that a second later. He was an adult, and he was strong. Not weak. He could take this. He could find a way to deal with this, deal with Jack. He couldn’t hide behind his work for the rest of his life. Just because he’d just found out that Jack had been his lover – his homosexual, manly, masculine, male lover – didn’t mean Daniel couldn’t handle this.

Oh, who was he kidding.

He grabbed the sweater and pressed it hard to his chest. Little did he know it at the time, but his heart was breaking as his rock hard erection tried to bore a hole through the buttons of his pants. He pressed the sweater closer to his cheek and stretched out on his side, head on the soft pillow that smelled like pine and Jack, with the sweater that felt like Jack pressed to his cheek.

And looked at the poster of dogs playing poker across from him.

It was emotional turmoil that got him crying again, not the sound of Jack singing off key in the shower like he had every morning Daniel had stayed the night, or the many memories of laying here with Jack half asleep. Jack pressed against him, crotch to butt, chest to back, his cheek laying on Daniel’s shoulder and his arm wrapped tightly around Daniel’s arms. Daniel had lain here as Jack whispered in his ear and shifted their legs until he could sink into Daniel’s aching, waiting body like a glove. They’d lain here and made love with the morning sun on their skin, the sheets sticky and sweat standing up on their bodies. They’d made love here, fucked here, played power games and tickled one another senseless. They’d laughed as they had sex, cried, screamed with rage and ecstacy both.

It had been here that Daniel had finally let go of his wife. It was here that Daniel realized there were things to live for that didn’t involve the SGC, or the world, or anything else. It was right here where Daniel fell in love for the first time in his life.

And Daniel had forgotten.

The grief was consuming. And he’d thought he had reached the limits of his grief before. He remembered, in vivid, crystal detail the last time he and Jack sat together, with Daniel dying in that goddamned hospital bed. Jack sitting there like a tortured statue, his eyes speaking a million things his mouth could not.

Those same hound dog eyes watching him from the bathroom door.

Jack stood tense, watching Daniel as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. "Daniel? You all right?"

Daniel had long ago realized that there were times in a man’s life when he comes to a crossroads in his thinking. Everything he has learned, everything he knows to be true in the deepest part of himself, comes into question so profoundly that he finds himself wondering if he knew his world as much as he thought he did.

This was one of those times. In that single, endless moment Daniel knew one thing, and one thing only. Beyond reason, beyond alien memory wipes, beyond death. He knew with all of his heart that Jack was the reason he’d come back.

Daniel had known the man for nearly a decade, and not once had he seen Jack fall apart as he did now. He stood in the doorway, gripping his jacket with a white knuckled grip, his hound dog eyes swimming hot with some unknown emotion he was struggling to repress.

Every touch, every kiss, every moment of an affair that they’d built up to for years was right there for Daniel to look at. The sweet, there-and-gone-again moments they’d shared between them seemed like the start of something warm and comforting at the time, and were now beautiful in the fact that those feelings were still there.

Jack, who’d risked everything by loving him, and Daniel, who’d never asked for anything but that love, had created something between them that had transcended death.

And it scared Daniel, right down to the core, to have so much love and companionship pointed at him from this strange, wonderful man.

Now only one question remained, one uncertainty that scared Daniel worse than facing off to any Goa’uld. When he was fighting he was in control – in this situation, he was flying by the seat of his pants. His heart had him gripped at the balls, not giving an inch in it’s resolve.

Daniel couldn’t remember being this scared in his life, because he knew that when he gave someone his heart it was for keeps. He loved like he lived – hard and completely, without pretenses and excuses. He had learned to keep his heart safe the hard way, and had the battle scars on his soul to prove it. Everyone he’d ever loved had been taken from him, or had left him for their own selfish ambitions.

He couldn’t go into this blind, not knowing if what he felt wasn’t returned. He couldn’t risk his too-fragile heart again, not without being completely sure. If Jack didn’t love him like Daniel loved Jack, then Daniel would find a way to move on without anyone being the wiser.

So much potential for this to go desperately wrong.

_Pull yourself together, Jackson._

Daniel sat up, offering a small smile as if his entire world hadn’t just shattered and rebuilt itself into some terrifying mish-mash of confusion, centered on making his pathetic existence more of a living hell. If Jack was equally bowled over he didn’t show it, though his deep brown eyes were subtly guarded once more. "Sorry, my head got away from me there for a minute."

"Understandable," Jack said, after a moment. He seemed to be gathering his words, something Daniel had seen him do several times over the last few weeks. At first, Daniel had thought that Jack was uncomfortable around him, what with him being resurrected from death and all that. Never would Daniel have guessed, in a million years, that Jack was struggling for words because he was hiding the fact that he knew just how Daniel’s ass felt in his hands. Nor would he have guessed, for that matter, that Jack could look at him with shameless bedroom hound dog eyes.

Jack shifted from the doorway of the bathroom casually, as if he were simply strolling into the bedroom and not watching Daniel, and Daniel’s streaked face, like a hawk. "You don’t look so good. You feeling okay?"

"Yeah, I just needed to use the bathroom – you mind?"

"Not at all," Jack said gently, and held one soft, warm hand out to him. There was no smile to speak of on his face. "I don’t think Carter and Teal’c would mind if we begged off dinner and stay here. I can fire up the barbecue, we can watch a game."

_And if you remember you love me, you can let me hold you, sleep with you, kiss you._

There were some things that time couldn’t change, and those were the feelings he and Jack had for one another. They’d walked into death side by side, been there for one another in ways no one but another soldier would ever understand. They were tied together by their lives as easily as they were bonded with friendship. Jack couldn’t ask him to leave any more than Daniel could do it.

Oma had given him a second chance. And for Jack, risking everything would be risking just enough.

The good mood from before had changed into something more real than all the sweet banter in the world. As real as Jack’s hands, as the blue threads in the soft blue wool sweater, and the stupid dogs playing poker on the wall.

Startlingly vivid and beautiful, all at once.

"Okay," Daniel said quietly, smiled, and took Jack’s hand.


End file.
